Directed by Christopher Nolan — Screenplay by Christopher Nolan.
I vividly remember watching Don Chaffey’s Jason and the Argonauts when I was a kid. Images of those Ray Harryhausen practical creature effects on display just burned themselves into my memory, for whatever reason. I’ve heard stories from my mother that she and her siblings once huddled up around the television, when she was young, to watch an adaptation of Homer’s Odyssey, only to have the TV then break in the middle of it (much to their frustration). Great sword-and-sandal myths and epics just do something to us, and so I was excited to see the latest attempt at making a larger-than-life sword-and-sandal epic with my mother this weekend. The film, of course, is Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey. The first film to be filmed entirely with IMAX cameras. It’s one of the biggest films of the year; it has a star-studded cast, and it is made by one of the most popular filmmakers of my lifetime. I don’t think I could be more excited to see the film than I was. Despite all of the weight of anticipation and the challenges of the story, the film is a triumph. It both feels like something that filmmakers and studios don’t try to make anymore and like something that could only be made at this scale today. Christopher Nolan’s latest film is both unlike anything he’s ever done before, concerning genre, myth, and magic, and exactly like so many of the other films in his oeuvre, concerning structure, message, and character goals. It is a daunting and colossal challenge of a project, and a test that the popular auteur has passed with flying colors.
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